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“Let us read, and let us dance;
these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

I made this: Unknown at 8:54 am
Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide


or press an ear against its hive.


I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,


or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.


I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.


But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.


They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

I discovered this amazing poem in Being Alive - the sequel to Staying Alive, both edited by Neil Astley. 

If Carlsburg did poetry anthologies, these would probably be them. Possibly the best poetry anthologies in the world.  




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